Carolina Hurricanes defensemen Joni Pitkanen is taken off the ice on a stretcher during an April game. / James Guillory, USA TODAY Sports

by Mike Brehm, USA TODAY Sports

by Mike Brehm, USA TODAY Sports

The Carolina Hurricanes will have to quickly readjust their defense after learning that Joni Pitkanen will miss the entire season with a broken heel.

He was hurt when he slid into the boards on April 2 during a race for the puck on an icing touch-up call and missed the remainder of last season.

"He's a good player that ate up a lot of minutes," Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford told USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday. "He's a 25-minute-per-game guy. We felt that with the changes we made this summer with the veteran, depth guys coming in, we had improved our defense.

"Now we have to step back and find someone who can play minutes, not necessarily 25. ... Certainly we have to find someone who's capable of playing 21 minutes a game."

Rutherford was busy this summer, trading for defenseman Andrej Sekera and signing Mike Komisarek. The Hurricanes have prospects on defense such as Brett Bellemore and Ryan Murphy, but Rutherford is also exploring the trade and free agent market.

"These are all guys that we feel could play, but can anybody get pushed up into playing 20 minutes?" he said. "That is the big question."

The 2013-14 season would have been Pitkanen's sixth with the Hurricanes and 10th in the NHL. He has scored 57 goals and 225 assists in 535 career regular-season games with the Philadelphia Flyers, Edmonton Oilers and Hurricanes. He's in the final year of a three-year, $13.5 million contract.

Rutherford had thought that Pitkanen might be ready for the start of the season, but that prognosis changed last month.

"We didn't really hear how serious it was until three weeks ago," he said. "At that time, Joni was still hoping he was going to be able to put more pressure on it and continue to get better. But it didn't."

The news of Pitkanen's lost season comes as the league is conducting preseason test of hybrid icing, which is designed to prevent such a catastrophic injury by making the race to the puck to the faceoff dot. If the defensive player gets there first, then the whistle is blown. The rule could be adopted in the regular season if the league and players' association sign off on it.

Rutherford is a proponent and he said other general managers liked it when they saw it being used at the rookie tournament in Traverse City, Mich. He hopes that the players sign off on it, too, for safety reasons, and says the new method doesn't take any excitement out of the game.

"It's still a race for the puck," Rutherford said. "The finish line is just farther away from the boards, so if you lose an edge or someone bumps you, you at least have a chance to maybe correct yourself and prevent an injury. I don't see where it takes anything away if you change it."